east west

what else can we absorb?

virginia snowed while i was there, which i thought was very kind of her. it's so peaceful out there when all the sound is absorbed. not that there's even that much to absorb. but it reminded me of a dream i had in early autumn, at the height of my missing the physical land of virginia - where i'm in the yard and i go to lay my face on the grass (not like it's even soft grass - it cuts and tears you up if you lay in it).....and i keep telling dad over and over "it's so quiet.....it's so quiet....it's so quiet". so i guess portland really is loud, even if it doesn't like you to think so.
i recorded grandma and grandpa (they sound so perfectly southern, it's almost comical). i recorded anda & irene (anda's english is improving). i recorded mom telling about how she burnt down 8 acres of forest when she was ten years old. i recorded dad telling me where he drank his first dr. pepper and had his first taco (i felt strange asking him about that....he has much better stories, but i was drawing a frantic blank and all i could think about was food). i have a feeling that very few of these things will be significant to anyone but myself, but isn't that enough?
while i was in town, dad was in the middle of inspecting a 1920's hotel that's going to be converted to a retirement community. he invited michael & i to come explore with him, so we checked out the patrick henry hotel on saturday afternoon. and it's the stuff that dreams are made of - apparently it opened in 1925 and did well until the crash in 1929 - and it's been struggling ever since. how it made it to 2005, i don't know. but you walk through an ornate lobby, through seedy back offices, down some stairs and then you run into a dining room - with the table all set for service of 18. covered with dust, just hidden back there. in the basment, there's an old night club with the chairs still sitting around the tables, facing the stage. there's an art deco floor with geometric furniture. i recorded our whole afternoon there, but i doubt that anyone will enjoy hearing us open creaky doors and stomp down old steps. maybe i'm not quite ready for the next big thing.
peter and i are preparing for our first vacation in march. out to montana for alex's wedding and then down through idaho and nevada to stay with an iranian tea merchant in san francisco. then we'll head up the coast through the redwoods (i hear they're so grand that they almost force you to worship) and maybe check out crater lake before arriving back in portland.

posted by jessica @ 10:48 AM 2 Comments

aspiring to be ira glass

i leave on a wednesday night red-eye for virginia. surprisingly, it's been too long, and i need to get back. i've been thinking about bringing peter's recorder that he uses for class along - maybe to document grandpa talking about his "fishin' hole" or grandma talking about the time she saw a panther when she was little. the things that are important to them, that they'd want their great-grandchildren to know. maybe i'll record anda in her broken form of bosnian-english, telling how the wars took her father, mother, and husband away and how now her "zsivot is no interessant". maybe to remember the way the front door sounds when i open it and breathe the familiar air. maybe to hear dad play reuben james on the banjo. maybe to listen to mom play her cello pieces. maybe to hear my old church "turn to page 62 and sing just as i am" during the invitation. i guess i just feel like i need to preserve the sound of my upbringing because i'm quickly losing it.

posted by jessica @ 5:12 PM 0 Comments

the nefarious undertoad

when i was young, my mom told me there was a bobcat in our woods and that he sounded like a woman crying. so, at the age of eight, i decided that the woods were dangerous and not a place for me. my fort making days were over.
since then, i tried to make amends with my fear of the woods and darkness.....it always came back to this nefarious bobcat which i had never even seen or heard. i just knew that it existed and would absolutely kill me if encountered. so, i guess it was the fear of an idea.
yesterday peter & i wanted to see some winter snow, so we drove up to larch mountain. we four-wheeled it as far as we could go without sliding into a ditch. on our way back something no bigger than a large dinner plate ran across the road. not quite a cat. not quite a dog. peter said it was a bobcat - we stopped in the road and watched it in the woods. it also stopped and watched us in the jeep. this little thing was what i had been afraid of for 15 years - the idea of this animal had kept me out of the woods and had made most of my experiences there terrifying.
it was so small.

posted by jessica @ 11:20 AM 0 Comments